Main Curriculum Focus
Term 2: Civics and Citizenship:Our democratic rights
Term 3: Geography: Biomes and food security: Geographies of interconnections
General Capabilities
● Ethical Understanding
● Critical and Creative Thinking
● Personal and Social Capability
Cross Curriculum Priorities
● Sustainability
Main Objective
How can we teach for creativity rather than teaching creatively? Providing students with opportunities to think, act, and learn as creative individuals, processes were designed to increase collaborative ways for students to work together, encouraging respectful debate, discussion and shared problem-solving.
Learning was positioned as enjoyable and self-driven,with students leading their own creative processes rather than relying on teacher-directed outcomes, building their understanding through collection,analysis, and presentation of information.
Each task would be compiled to create a toolbox of creative teaching strategies to be shared with the wider teaching cohort, promoting sustainable practices that nurture creativity and collaboration across the curriculum.
Project Overview
TERM 2
During Term 2 and 3, Year 9 students at Belmont City College embarked on an ambitious interdisciplinary project titled Political Biomes.Through creative learning and hands-on collaboration, students explored the complexities of Australia’s political system, environmental issues, and the connections between people, place and policy.
Reflecting on the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) SDG 13 – Climate Action and the 2025 Federal Election, an inquisitive exploration of Civics and Citizenship through reflection of student’s current understanding of the responsibilities of government generated the creation of their own political parties. The classroom transformed into alively political arena as students learned about government responsibilities,the role of political parties, and how ideas evolve into policies. They created their own political parties, wrote constitutions, developed education, health,environment and community policies and debated and campaigned to gain support for their causes — all while exploring what it means to be an active citizen.
TERM 3
By Term 3, the focus shifted towards the environment and stances on economic, technological, and ecological factors affecting the world’s biomes. Through art, discussion, and design, they considered the environmental and economic impact of human activities on food and fibre production.
Reflecting on knowledge gained, activities enabled students to determine how biomes are used, altered, and sustained through human activity linking SDG 15 – Life on Land which aims to protect ecosystems and promote sustainable land use. Current and future impacts and threats to biomes coincided with tackling student ideas for sustainable housing development,exploring sustainable practices in agriculture, ethical consumption and reducing environmental degradation alongside the economic impact of these processes linking SDG 12 – Responsible Consumption and Production to communities,housing and food supply.
“You don’t want to stop them because they’re just on a roll.” — Teacher, Fiona Ball
How did we make the curriculum come alive?
Through structured warm-ups and reflective activities linked to subject content, students strengthened their critical and creative thinking,memory recall, and persistence when faced with challenges. Students explored real-world political and environmental issues through creative, student-led inquiry. Debating real statements from the Vote Compass questionnaire, designing and presenting Urban Farming models that tackled sustainability, food production, and cost of living and developing persuasive presentations to “pitch” their designs to staff created rich, animated classroom debates that mirrored the intensity of real political discussions. Even humour became a creative tool to engage with complex environmental and social issues.
“Eat plastic — it’ll reduce pollution and give you a Barbie doll look!” — Student group response
How did we make the 5 Habits of Learning come alive?
Every session began with a silent warm-up before entering the classroom, designed to spark curiosity and encourage focus. Whether students were generating their own information, collaborating in randomly selected groups, finding partners without words, building towers with one hand,or debating 60-second arguments, each activity increased the use of creative habits. Students began to identify and reflect on these habits regularly —understanding that critical and creative thinking is about how we think, communicate, and problem-solve.
How did we activate student voice and learner agency?
By connecting content to issues that students were able to relate to, curiosity increased alongside critical thinking around political and environmental systems resulting in collaboration and engagement, even amongless confident students. By structuring sessions so that they merged student generated ideas with curriculum content, Political Biomes proved that creative learning empowered students to see themselves as active participants in shaping the world around them. They were encouraged to be reflective, have avoice and share ideas and opinions which were able to be facilitated into new activities and learning opportunities. They exchanged knowledge by posing questions and providing their own answers using the whiteboard and post-it notes at the end of each session.
What was the impact?
Not all moments were easy — some students initially struggled with political terminology, group dynamics, and abstract ideas of “rights” and “responsibilities.” Others grappled with the discipline of listening to opposing views. Yet these very challenges sparked authentic learning. As the sessions progressed, so did their persistence, problem-solving, and the ability to give and receive feedback. By the project’s end, students who were once reluctant to speak were confidently presenting complex environmental and political ideas — and, most importantly, listening to each other.
‘Groups who would never speak to each other have put together amazing presentations. They have completely different values and belief systems yet have utilised creative habits effectively. This is in such contrast to where we were at the beginning’ — Jodie Davidson, Creative Practitioner
‘The students have been so engaged, they simply haven’t had time to misbehave’ … Fiona, Teacher
From silent start activities to persuasive speeches, every session cultivated confidence, curiosity, and empathy — turning politics and biomes into living, breathing classroom experiences.
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